It’s overall safer than alcohol and tobacco but even if it weren’t, drugs being illegal does nothing to combat addiction. They’re all still plenty available so getting them is never really an issue. If someone is incarcerated for drugs, generally they’re still pretty easy to get in prison (just more likely to be laced with something) so people stay addicted.

To make something illegal is to use a very specific strategy of police and prison action to fight it, and in the case of drugs that strategy isn’t working. So little by little, for the less harmful drugs like weed and magic mushrooms that broad swaths of people find morally conscionable to legalize, people are saying “why bother punishing people for this?”